Certainly, she has been severely punished for her nine-day tryst with the teenager, who, his mother says, has been mocked by peers. If anything, one would have thought they might be jealous. The internet is awash with sites dealing with "older woman teacher-pupil" fantasies. And there lies the rub – should the law be treating male and female pupil victims equally when male and female teenagers are so different?

Ahh, yes. It's the old 'No, actually, we don't want equality, we need appreciation of our differences and assistance for the designated victim classes' approach that has been creeping in to other issues, most recently race and religion.

In Martin's case, with her hefty prison sentence, and placement on the sex offenders' register, she has effectively been punished exactly the same as a man.

I think you are on to something here. We on the anti-statist wing are fighting old fights while our opponents have moved on. They still talk about "equality" (and they love it in job titles) but when you think about it, they have been actively promoting inequality for a long time. Maybe we should grab the word for ourselves, like they stole "liberal" from us?

Sentencing has to be the same if the crimes the same, yes the boy may have been a lucky sod, but that's not the issue, it's what the teacher did and gender differences in this case make no difference to sentencing. You can't have one rule for them etc. it's already caused far too many problems with politicians getting off lightly.

Nope, that 'comments' link doesn't work either, maybe you have to be logged on.Long time since I've been a teacher but I expect that any girl who sleeps around is still a "slag" but a boy doing likewise is merely "one of the lads".

I knew a chap ( adult ) who had been shagging his History Mistress since age 15, they eventually married, didn't do either of them any harm.On the other hand that was before they changed the law to make the age of consent @18 for persons in a position of trust. That teacher broke the law and got punished accordingly. In law she was three years too soon, like a non-teacher shagging a 13 year old.

Well, they wanted equality, now they've got it, one of their own in gaol.

BTW a decade ago, she wouldn't have been committing a crime at all -gross misconduct certainly but not a serious criminal offence. But equality-obsessed Labour just couldn't bear having different ages of consent for males and females, could they? That's sexist per se.

And finally, when I was checking the date for the above, I found out that Saudi Arabia has taken a very non-sexist approach towards determining the age of consent: they don't have one at all. Now that's really putting the concept of Equality foremost.

"Well, they wanted equality, now they've got it, one of their own in gaol."

I suspect they wanted it until they got it, then changed their minds. That's women for you.. ;)

"Rather a 39 year old experienced woman than Tracey who has already been through 11A, 11B and is halfway through 11C."

Indeed!

"BTW a decade ago, she wouldn't have been committing a crime at all -gross misconduct certainly but not a serious criminal offence. But equality-obsessed Labour just couldn't bear having different ages of consent for males and females, could they? That's sexist per se."

Is there nothing they haven't ruined in their quest to 'improve mankind'?

"The 'Guardian' seems to have a few problems judging its audience lately."

Really, Julia? Guardianistas (i.e the people who actually buy the newspaper, as opposed to you and me and probably most of the commenters on CiF) lap this shit up. Ellen, Bindel, Campbell et al have been churning it out for years.

Not sure which was the more repugnant, this or Libby Brooks's apology for the murderer Jane Andrews.